I think it would be a very good if the Wikinews Reports hade many different voices in the same broadcast. During the day, the articles are continuosly converted into audio files (by different volunteers). When it's time to put the report together, the "Putting-Report-Together-Guy" (PRTG) takes the stories of the day and mixes them together into one full news cast. The PRTG would only have to record the date and end titles, so it would be much faster than now, when the PRTG has to record all the stories himself (and its easier to listen to a report containing different voices, than listening to the same voice for fifteen minutes). I would be happy to contribute to this, but I just want to make sure that it's technically possible. I also need a recording program that can record Ogg Vorbis... Väsk 11:31, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I really like that idea -- and several individuals can PRTGs. Reports could be uploaded to commons and the Vorbis files posted to Wikinews:Audio Wikinews/Reports... The variation in voices, etc, would be great. Briefs and Full Reports might or might not include some of the same stories -- depending on whether it's still up-to-date news or if the story has been updated. As reports are edited into programs (by the PRTGs), they can make notes on the above Reports page so folks will know what's going on... Anyone object if I mock up the Reports page?

I found out about Audacity later, you should add something about how to record and recommended software on the WNN pages. I recorded one this morning: Google planning PayPal rival. Väsk 21:15, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

We need to find a way to notify one-another that we're working on a brief or full report. I just finished a brief and reloaded the Audio Wikinews page to find one was very recently submitted. Perhaps contributors could simply add the next line to the table and insert "In production" in the spot where the file link will later go. How does that sound? --Chiacomo (talk) 03:59, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

On french wikinews, we try to set up a similar project to Wikinews:Audio Wikinews : Wikinews:Audio (it's just in testing right now, as we haven't got the approval of the community and as we need more articles...) anyway, we've thought about creating a common (interlanguage) news brief - as translation of one or two lines technically is easier than whole articles. These international news briefs would have to concern only globally important matters (mainly politics, conflicts, diplomacy). What do you think of this idea and the possible creation of a project on Meta (after having Spanish, German wikinews with us) ? Faager - «?» 28 June 2005 20:23 (UTC)

In my opinion, it is a great idea. Are you thinking of international news briefs in english or in more than one language? --SonicR 28 June 2005 20:33 (UTC)

We had thought of multilingual news briefs (at least English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Swedish and French which are the 7 "biggest" Wikinewses). It'd meet the international ambition of Wikinews giving the same - reworked and reviewed (through the multilingual revision process) information to everyone for global issues. Faager - «?» 29 June 2005 16:35 (UTC)

This is sort of started, in concept at least, here on en. See News briefs. The news briefs are templated into the top of each daily category as well. The New brief actually is made up of short articles attached to main articles in the form [[Article name/Brief]], which makes it easy to find and use it in many different ways. - Amgine/talk 28 June 2005 21:02 (UTC)

This is exactly what we'd want to make accessible to any language - a cooperation to achieve greater quantity (and quality). Faager - «?» 29 June 2005 16:35 (UTC)

I can set this up for any site which wants something similar, or we could create briefs here for foreign language articles. How would you like this to work? - Amgine/talk 30 June 2005 02:31 (UTC)

I'd prefer it to be a project hosted by Meta, so that en.wikinews doesn't become central or gains even more importance than that it already has. Faager - «?» 30 June 2005 16:37 (UTC)

There's been some discussion recently on talk pages as well as IRC about on trying to standardize script templates for Briefs and Full Reports. If Wikinews audio content is to be picked up by online (and potentially on-air) broadcasters, it will be important for them to know what to expect as concerns length of segments, etc... Our listeners will expect and should receive a "standardized" package -- perhaps introductions of segments should be essentially the same, the format and order of content should be somewhat the same, etc...

Additionally, as we are wiki, it is essential that our scripts be products of the community and open to editing and comment. Current practice (my own included) has been to prepare the transcript shortly before broadcast, record a brief, and upload. Ashamedly, I confess that I've even prepared briefs without a transcript at all -- only quoting relevant sections of published articles "on the fly".

Recently, some editors of at least News Brief transcripts have experimented with including a "brief" as a subpage of a published article. See Bodies found at crash site of US helicopter in Afghanistan/Brief for an example of a brief attached to an article. That brief was later transcluded into a "News Briefs" page for the appropriate date -- see News briefs:June 30, 2005 for an example. The purpose here is to allow editors to write briefs, perhaps, as they write or edit articles thereby relieving one individual of the responsibility of writing the entire transcript. Articles whose content is included in briefs could be copied into a dated and timed transcript for an Audio Wikinews News Brief. Additionally, I suppose, the transcluded briefs page might be used by some individuals to get a quick synopsis of current news (especially if the practice of including a /Brief page is adopted or at least accepted by the community).

You've read my novel, now some questions:

Should we develop or attempt to standardize the opening of Audio Wikinews News Briefs and Full Reports. For example, "This is your Audio Wikinews News Brief for January 1, 2005 at 1930 UTC. I'm John Doe."

Should we develop or attempt to standardize "extra" content for AW News Briefs or Full Reports? For example, facts from wikipedia, today in history, inclusions from current events on WP, etc. Coverage and inclusion of these items has been somewhat spotty and there doesn't appear to be an accepted practice.

Should we develop or attempt to standardize the closing comments? The closing comments of both AW Briefs and Full Reports list a telephone number and a gmail address -- who is responsible for checking these methods of contacting wikinews? Should these be roles or something rather than an individual responsibility? We certainly should ALWAYS include the statement about Wikinews, the Wikimedia Foundation, and Public Domain.

Any changes we make should be put into the Script Templates. Currently, there is nothing in either of the templates talking about "public domain", so we should probably figure out what to put there.
The News Brief template, as it stands, says this about mentioning Wikipedia Current Events: "Keep as short as possible, and discuss items not encompassed above. Should only be used as a time-filler, unless important items are missing above." --Munchkinguy 2 July 2005 17:06 (UTC)

I'd really like to see some standardization on the content of these recordings - it really seems a free-for-all at the moment, and the current instructions are a little worrying - they amount to little more than "roll your own"!

I can't see what's needed more than people just reading out published articles, then saving them to files with the same name .ogg. People could record as many or as few as they feel like, and hopefully we'd get a mix of people recording (sounds better). Someone could then edit them together to make one complete recording (say for the last day), which could then be podcast and possibly streamed as a loop.

Does it need to be any more complex than that? Dan100 (Talk) 3 July 2005 00:34 (UTC)

I mostly agree Dan100 (sometimes the way something is written is not so easy to read aloud, so rewording to make it easier may occasionally be necessary.)

When it comes to News briefs, obviously we don't want to read entire articles - we want to squeeze a lot of stories into a short amount of time. For these it is fairly easy to pick and choose the stories from each day's News briefs which add up to enough time, again just reading the text from the /Brief which is editable by everyone. There should be "lead-in" (Stating it's a news brief, and the name of the recorder, date and time), and if there is enough time a "lead-out". The lead-out doesn't need to have a lot of information in my opinion.

Full reports, on the other hand, should be simple reading of a single article. There should be no lead-in or lead-out. These will be strung together by an "announcer", possibly with sound segués, into a sort of "show" at some point. But first we need to get people to start submitting the recorded stories.

That's my two cents, at least - keep it simple, don't spend limited seconds trying to promote Wikinews, use the text content built by the community and avoid trying to be the star of the show; the news is the star, we're just there in a supporting role. - Amgine/talk 3 July 2005 01:39 (UTC)

OK, that sounds like Amgine, Chiacomo and I are pretty much in agreement. Anyone mind if I attack the wn:a page to reflect this? I think the current 'instructions' are causing more trouble than they're worth. Dan100 (Talk) 3 July 2005 10:12 (UTC)

Done the overhaul. I discarded rubbish like the 'contact details' (??) and the sound effects section. I changed the terminology a bit: Report=recordings of complete articles, Briefs=recordings of brief versions of articles. If poeple start recording stuff in a reliable and consistent manner, we can start thinking about combininng them to make 'Full reports' and podcasting them (which would be tres cool). Dan100 (Talk) 5 July 2005 13:02 (UTC)

Oh and, just in case anyone gets frisky with the Rollback button, you can see what I did here. Dan100 (Talk) 5 July 2005 13:08 (UTC)

I've just noticed that I've just done is exactly what was already suggested under Ideas above :-). So let's make it work! Dan100 (Talk) 5 July 2005 13:16 (UTC)

This is too confusing, guys. Can you please clarify what the new regulations are? I've lost track of what the briefs and reports actually are under this new format - and I'm very confused about all this new stuff. Are compilations of articles still in play, or are we making a recording for every single article now? --Mrmiscellanious 5 July 2005 20:29 (UTC)

I concur. Very confusing. Maybe we should have two seperate sub-pages: one for the recording of each article, and one for the the Full Reports & News Briefs. --Munchkinguy 6 July 2005 02:44 (UTC)

And are we still doing Full Reports? I think they're important (I never did one, but I still think they're important). "Audio Wikinews: Full Report" doesn't seem to fit into either the "report" category (one entire article) or the "brief" category. It is important that we have a daily news program that covers all the important stories of the day. --Munchkinguy 6 July 2005 03:30 (UTC) PS: Can you count the times I said "Important"?

The new new format is much better. Fantastic! No more confusion! --Munchkinguy 01:02, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this a bit and I figure that we could pull it off. If we could garner the support of a site like Live365 since we are non-profit and get a price reduction, wthen we could have instant access to the news without all the trouble of .ogg files. (I had a hell of a time trying to find a player that would play the files.)

One of the problems that I have currently noticed is that we have two programs, not counting the news briefs and full reports. That would start to get repetative quickly. Now both those shows, from what I gather about them as I have not had the chance to listen to them yet, cover most aspects of the general new itself. The other time slots need to be filled with other programs, but I don't really see the search for programs to be strong. Now we already have enough material to do a sports show, a entertainment show, and a politics show (they don't even have to be NPOV (as long as both "sides" would get fair representation) with two or more hosts). The point is that the audio Wikinews and Wikinews Network will stay in a rut until we do these things. Now once these things start to be accomplished the live streaming Wikinews begins to be a true reality.

Back to the Live 365 thing. If we didn't get a price reduction (which I highly doubt we would get anyway) the cost for live relay broadcasting, 200 simultaneous listeners, and 2000 MBs of storage equals $1,199.40 for a year. (yes I'm thinking of donations) For 300 simultaneous listeners its $1,348.90. That is very pricey though. Which is why I'm writing this. I want to know if there are other options for online broadcasting at a lower rate.

I would really like to see this happen so let's figure out a way to do it. -Martinman11 8 July 2005 20:55 (UTC)

It would be nice, but if you look at the scheduale for the streaming Wikinews Network, you can see that there is very little schedualed. --Munchkinguy 9 July 2005 02:22 (UTC)

My point exactly. We need to start producing more programs. -Martinman11 20:54, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Icecast [1] can be used to stream OGG/Vorbis both live/rolling and 'on-demand'. This would require a dedicated server which would cost in the region of at least EUR350 a year for a 10Mbps port. --Pvtparts 09:55, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Folks, I thought I'd update you on this ASAP. I've found a way to get our project to have it's own podcast (one for Full Reports, one for News Briefs), and I'll be working on that mostly this week. Expect for a RSS feed to be up shortly. --Mrmiscellanious 20:16, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

This project is still officially "proposed"

Just a note, though this project is progressing rapidily, it is still only a proposal which has not been officially endorsed by the Foundation or by consesnus of the Wikinews community. -- Davodd | Talk 23:50, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

At the same time, it never has been officially opposed. [2] --Mrmiscellanious 00:23, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

That was added as a mistake. I removed it and apologise for any misunderstanding it caused. -- Davodd | Talk 03:49, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I would love there to be a podcast, but I have reservations calling a feed that links to ogg files a podcast. - Cohesion 05:36, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

This project page is getting a little too disorganized. I think we should have a selection of all the denominations of Audio Wikinews (/News Briefs, /Full Reports, /Spoken Wikinews), and a selection page when users type in "Wikinews: Audio Wikinews". Something like this. --Mrmiscellanious 20:41, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

NGerda just reverted Dan100's removal of what he labeled as "imaginary projects". As these projects indeed are imaginary, suggest reverting it back to Dan100's last edit. If somebody cares to create proposals for those projects, etc, then we can possibly link to them. --Dejan Čabrilo 02:55, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

The projects have proposals, whi are linked to by the curret Audio Wikinews page. The reason I reverted Dan's edit was because he did not discuss or get approval for the major change he made to both the look layout, and links of the Audo Wikinews main page. -- NGerda 04:07, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Essentialy, they are not Wikinews' projects. The right place to put a proposal for them is on a Water cooler, so I'll revert back to Dan100's edit. --Dejan Čabrilo 04:14, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Dan100's edits should have been discussed. Te current layout was suported above. -- NGerda 04:19, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

First, I liked the coloured boxes that were there before and that Dan100 calls "ugly". Second, Wikinews World Report is not an imaginary project; there has been one edition of it so far. Therfore, we can have four nice coloured boxes on the project page. --Munchkinguy 04:33, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Of course, it's a matter of taste (I personally don't think there is need for boxes, and like it more in-line). A propo WWR, NGerda recorded it as a "demo", and there is obviosly not enough support for such a show. --Dejan Čabrilo 04:36, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Dcabrilo, there was an actual show besides the demo. It is linked to on the subproject page that you removed the link to. Wikinews World Report was supported by 4 Wikinewsies and opposed by 3 Wikinewsies. -- NGerda 04:39, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

In a very informal vote and a very liberal interpretation of comments. Besides, we are not a democracy here. --Dejan Čabrilo 04:40, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I would consider a majority vote enough support to lik to a project, though. -- NGerda 04:42, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

Audio Wikinews is no longer a proposal, it's a community-endorsed project. I removed the links to what are at best ideas, and at worst, rejected proposals.

I was going to keep the boxes but, having been left with only three parts, it didn't look good (plus they were difficult to edit). Furthermore, the descriptions in the boxes were wrong, but there wasn't enough space in them to a decent amount of text to properly describe each subsection.

I'd really like people to embrace Audio Wikinews and support it as it is, rather than use it as a battleground to push pet projects which are generally opposed by the community. Dan100 (Talk) 15:42, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

But what about the coloured squares? I found them to give the page a much friendlier interface. Also, I think we need a link to the releases.

Dan, the colored boxes were there to make it easier and look nicer than just putting text links. The short descriptions went inside the boxes, then a larger description on their own Wikinews:Audio Wikinews/ page, along with their releases. I have put off on creating the new release pages until FutureTalk2 is complete, and further opinions on the nature of the project and its relation to Wikinews are expressed. The boxes aren't too hard to edit :-). --Mrmiscellanious 19:52, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry. The commoent that says "what about the coloured squares?" was mine. I forgot to log in, and I forgot to sign it. How embarassing. Sorry if this caused anyone to put a Welcome message on my talk page. --Munchkinguy 20:13, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I changed the project page to sort-of-the-way-it-was-before. Any comments? --Munchkinguy 20:27, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Since there has never been a definition of either, although Amgine, NGerda and I have been discussing it ever since the beginning of the two. We need to vote on how long and how often the two formats should be.

My Proposals:

News Briefs should be no longer than 2 minutes, and should be recorded at least daily.

Full Reports should be no shorter than 4 minutes, and should be recorded at least weekly.

I always thought HTML, that conforms to WWW consortium standards, was
able to be automatically rendered by an "audio browser", such as a blind
person might use. As such, wouldn't it be better to make
sure the HTML generated by wikipedia is suitable for audio rendering
rather than manually converting articles to audio?

The WWW Consortium has a page about alternative
rendering methods, including audio.

'Audio rendering' would also mean that the audio is always in
sync with the written text.

I agree though that there are valid reasons for doing the job manually:

Community involvement

A friendly human voice

The audio might flow better if it is not a verbatim copy of the written text.

It would be neat if each page could have a 'read it to me' icon on it.
The audio rendering might be done by a java program, downloaded as
part of the wikipedia content, so the user doesn't have to specifically
have their browser set up for audio. Apart from the java download the
additional bandwidth and computing power requirments on the wikimedia
servers would be zero.

Failing that the wikimedia servers
might do the rendering and provide an ogg file. Providing an ogg would
be costly though in terms of bandwidth and computing power.

I haven't actually listened to it, but FreeTTS
is a free (BSD license) voice synthesiser written in java.

I like that we're trying to make this better but we have a bunch of concrete problems that need to be fixed more then orginizational problems are gui errors before we start discussing minute details. My biggest complaint is the reporters of the audio news. I think it's great what they're doing but can we get people who don't sound like some guy talking on a $5 mic who has a really annoying voice (or is that what we're going for?)? --69.76.197.242 05:24, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

As you may know, this is a Wiki operated entirely by volunteer editors. Anyone is free and welcome to create an audio version of an article or a news brief. Most don't use advanced equipment or editing software (Audacity seems to to be the most popular recording tool). If you have a voice that is pleasing to the ear and own professional recording equipment, I would encourage you to use those gifts to record audio content for Wikinews. Please let me know if I can assist you in any way in creating or uploading/updating Audio Wikinews content. --Chiacomo (talk) 05:28, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Coming in late on this discussion, But if you Like the way someone sounds, tell them. I imagine all of us like to have our ego's boosted a little and a compliment really helps. It also helps the announcer/reader gauge their own impact in doing the work. dzcowart 21:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't really think that the original opener music sounds too professional, that's what motivated me to re-record it. Please listen to Voxhumana-opener.ogg and a brief demo of both old and new music. Also notice that this "premixed music" is actually much easier to use than the original one. So please, give it a try.
--Voxhumana 18:16, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I like it! I'm starting to use it in my recordings. Do you have a closer to go with it? KeithH 09:39, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I like it too. It is much better than the orginal opener music. Can we get an admin to support the change in "Official" opener music? dzcowart 21:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The dates of the News Briefs use the "/" separation character, while the Spoken Wikinews section uses "-". The "-" is the ISO international standard, so I am about to change the "/" characters to "-".
See http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html .
—67-21-48-122 21:08, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

If a person wanted to listen to the news couldn't they just take the straight text and get it read out to them by a suitable computer program? Am I missing something or doesn't this seem like a lot of wasted effort and money for very little benifit? Mathmo 19:10, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, granted, voice synthesis has come a long way, but if you really LIKE the sound of a computer-generated voice (or have no other choice because you're visually impaired), nothing stops you for doing that. There is something about the sound of an actual human voice, read over radio or TV, and I think that's what Audio Wikinews tries to emulate. FWIW, you might ask the Associated Press why they put out video, audio, and podcasts when most people read AP's products. [3] Just a thought. KeithH 02:14, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Heh, guess you are kind of making valid points, Although I did already know that, and it still seems of marginal benifit. After all I expect in only a few shorts years it will be common place for you not to be able to tell the difference of it is "real" or not. Oh well, it does come down to a choice for everybody. You can help out with this, but I'll be keeping my attentions fixed on other parts of the wiki! :p Mathmo 05:43, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to revisit the use of ogg rather than mp3. I use a mac (please no jokes) and have spent a *lot* of time compiling Audacity to work on it [4]. Ogg may be an open standard but it is probably the least supported. Is there any way we could use mp3 instead? WillJenkins 21:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it'd be useful to also support the mp3 format (quite often I'm on other computers which don't have any software that can play .ogg files). We should continue to primarily use the OGG format on principle, but if there's any way of additionally supplying MP3 versions (is there any way of doing automatic conversion?), then that would be useful... Frankie Roberto 22:16, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I remember to have read in another discussion, that mp3 is "out of question" due to licence problems. Sorry, this must sound like I´m trying to squash the starting discussion. I´ll try to find the original source an forward the link. Gumboyaya 07:48, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Audacity can export to MP3 aswell. I don't see it becoming a lot of extra work for the speaker to make one of each - licensing permitting. --Skenmy 08:20, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I'll be honest, my gut feeling was that this would be a licensing issue. I can't think why though, there are free (as in GPL'd) open source coding/decoding codecs for mp3. WillJenkins 10:28, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I Don't see why everyone has a problem with ogg. Just download a codec and it works fine on WMP or VLC or whatever you're using. I remember reading somewhere that wikimedia projects shalt not use mp3 or othe proporitry formats. I'll try and see if I can find it. Bawolff ☺☻ 19:02, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

The Commons doesn't accept MP3 sound files. These should be converted to Ogg files and use the FLAC, Speex, or Vorbis codecs depending on your needs. Speex is intended for recordings of speech, Vorbis is for general audio and is lossy (quality is reduced) - FLAC is for general audio and is lossless (quality is preserved), but current filesize caps prevent its use for anything but short clips. In most cases, Vorbis should be used.

But thats just commons, I'll see if I can find some wikimedia proclamation. Bawolff ☺☻ 19:06, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

It says something similiar in meta:Multimedia but no referenses to where it came from. Theres also this post to the mailing list. Bawolff ☺☻ 19:14, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I have a problem with it because a) I don't/can't use WMP b) I have to download VLC specially to listen to Wikinews c) Audacity is the *only* software for the Mac that will record ogg. I had to battle to compile it from source which took a long time. I just don't see it as a very friendly format if novice users have to download special codecs/software just to listen to Wikimedia. WillJenkins 21:32, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I still haven´t found the discussion I remember. Mabye Bawolff is more successful. I checked the whole watercooler this mornin´, and all I remember at the mo´ is, that someone complained in more or less rude words about ogg-files, and someone else posted a polite but rather clear answer which told clearly, why MP3 can not be used.

To skenmy: As you put it correctly, it´s no bother for the speaker to produce an MP3-file with audacity, but the problem - as far as I remember - is closely related to the question of money, combined with judicial questions.

To Will Jenkins: Mabye one of the people in IRC can help you. I´d suggest you place your question at around 9 p.m. (your local time) there. I have the best experiences, whenever I had questions, usally someone is around who could at least give me a push in the right direction, or solved my question "from the hip", so to speak/write.

Thats a good idea. If not you could email the wikimedia mailing list. Bawolff ☺☻ 17:48, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

We can not use MP3s, because they are not a free format. In countries that recognize software patents (US & Japan), there are no free, non-infringing encoders. See pedia for more information.--Cspurrier 18:22, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

One loophole here, You could create and host the mp3's externally, and then list them on audio wikinews as unoficial media in alternate formats with link. Bawolff ☺☻ 18:27, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that there was the big link for news briefs and spoken wikinews that looked like a title. What do you think of putting a WN:DPL under it of spoken/news breifs? Bawolff ☺☻ 21:38, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

What is the copyright situation with news briefs, all they still PD like they were historically, or are new ones CC-BY (like how the rest of wikinews switched). The reason I ask is some on commons have contridicting tags (for example:

Recent Recording (by Gumboyaya and I anyways) have been released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License (what that means, IDK, but just what Gumboyaya did, so I used it as well terinjokesUser Page / Talk 22:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC)